When did popups become acceptable?

[wheel]

I went to two different SE/webmaster forums today. Both mainstream. One I followed from a link posted by Brett on this site. Both sites had an in your face popup.

Why is this becoming mainstream again? And why are people complacent about it? I remember when forums wouldn't allow links to sites that had popups, that's how distasteful they were considered.

[ergophobe]

When conversion tracking become popular?

I can't count the number of times I've heard people say "I hate popups/auto start audio/auto start video but I tracked conversions and it increased sales by X percent".

Alternatively, usability of popups is better and they can be a great usability addition if you're not talking about sales pages.

[tonynoriega]

Yeah...i think for a while there pop ups were just like a plague... over the past few years we have come to combat them better...

So as they are not always in your face so much, its kind of like "oooh a pop up.. i thought they were extinct...maybe ill take a look"